Ancients
by uniqueUsername1024
Summary: Minecraft is full of evidence of those who came before: abandoned mineshafts, abandoned villages, Nether fortresses, dungeons, and Ocean Monuments. This story tells the tale of the bloody lands that we now build on, a testament to the time before Steve and the world he destroyed.
1. Poisoned

CHAPTER ONE: Poison

The mineshafts were, as always, full of sweaty-palmed miners looking for ores. Hefting _Stonekiller,_ my Efficiency V iron pickaxe, I joined them. As if I had any choice. The mysterious HB, who ruled our world, demanded it. The cave spiders, who guard our payment and ensure we turn in our daily quota of coal and iron, were relentless in their punishments.

As I mined through seemingly endless stone, my mind wandered to the happy memories of when Ender Dragon was still in power. She was a kind ruler, though she did have a softer spot for endermen than other mobs, but we villagers were treated kindly and with much respect.

My favorite of the memories was the day that my uncle, who was the village priest, gave me _Stonekiller._ It was only my eighth birthday, but rumor was that HB would be taking power soon and forcing us all into mines, so he wanted me to have the best possible pickaxe. That was the last time I'd seen him.

 _"Erro, your uncle's there!" my mom called to me. I came racing to the front door to greet him with the grin that many people had said was dazzling. He smiled at me and said, "I have a surprise for you, but I'm going to give it to you in private." My eyes widened and we went into the backyard. He gave me a smile and handed me a pickaxe that sparkled with the telltale signs of enchantment. I took it eagerly and read what it said. "Efficiency V? And you even named it_ Stonekiller _for me! Thank you thank you THANK YOU!" I screeched, hysterical with excitement._ Stonekiller _had been the name of my imaginary pickaxe when I was five years old._

Suddenly, my eyes focused in at the block in front of me. I couldn't believe my luck. Right there, in the side of the wall, a few pieces of gold were imbedded in stone. I mined them up quickly and continued on. They were good, but nowhere near my daily quota.

When the end of the day came, I went with all of the others to turn in what I had found: gold and a few lumps of coal. It wasn't enough to please the cave spiders. I braced myself for what came next: a sharp bite of poison in my chest. The poison wouldn't kill me, but it was agonizing while it lasted. I waited until it finally stopped and drew myself up to my full height: two blocks, a respectable distance for a twelve year old.

Some of the other miners looked at me with sympathetic glances. We'd all had to bear the wrath of the cave spider at one point or another, but I was among the youngest miners and so, even with my pickaxe, I couldn't go far enough most days to get ores and avoid the poison.

"Are you okay? They do that to you almost every day," one of the others said to me. I brushed them off, not wanting any pity. "I'll be fine. I just need to eat food," I lied. In truth, I probably couldn't survive much longer like this, though I wouldn't have turned down some fresh bread or baked potatoes.

I walked away before they could say anything more about my sickly green face or how my calm outer façade was cracking a bit more every day. _Stonekiller_ was a comforting weight on my back, something to remind me of the pre-HB era.

My real village was too far away to go there every day after work, but the mule delivery system kept them alive with my pay. I lived in a small crevice of a cave like many other workers, not eating any of the freshly grown crops that I did before HB took power. Instead, I did what my parents taught me not to: whenever I get the chance to surface, I killed animals for their meat using a simple stone sword, which I crafted from all of the stone that looms around me.

 _Stonekiller_ was my only iron tool, but that's more than most people had, be-cause we didn't get to keep anything that we mined, having to trade our pay for it instead. I could've just made my own mine from my shelter, but I wastoo exhausted by the end of the day to use it.

I lay down in bed and waited until everyone else has, too, before finally fall-ing asleep. When I woke up, I saw something weird on my wall. It was two item frames, one with a book-and-quill in it, the other with a map. Hesitantly, I got out the book and opened it up.

 _HB, the faceless ruler who is all mystery, needs to go. The Ender Dragon has been imprisoned in her dimension with her egg. You are needed to free her from what was her home but what has now become her prison. The Fortress needs you. If you want to join us, there is a Nether Portal hidden at these coordinates: X: 0, Y: 64, Z: 0. The Portal will de-spawn after sunset. If you turn us in, you will be the first to die. Come this afternoon._

My mind was racing with possibilities. I thought that The Fortress was just a myth, but the evidence was undeniably there. I could've turned them in, because they were wanted for _three diamonds,_ but I couldn't really have brought myself to do it. The coordinates, it turned out, were only a short distance from the cave.

I'd made up my mind to go by the time that work started. I didn't even find a lump of coal, mostly because most of that workday was spent traveling to an espe-cially far mining site, leaving me little time to actually use _Stonekiller._

The cave spiders seemed in an especially bad mood today, making me nervous when I turn in nothing but cobblestone. Two bit me at once. I fell to the floor writhing in pain.

Finally, the pain stopped, but I was still weak and too hungry to heal myself. I could barely walk over to the minecart; how was I supposed to get to the Nether Po-rtal in time? Even if I managed to get there, could I survive changing dimensions?

I knew the answer before I even thought the question. Of course I couldn't go to the Portal. There was a large delay on the trip back, something that was becoming more and more common. While I sat in the minecart, doubled over from pain, some-one behind me saw how hurt I was.

"I live pretty near here. Do you want to come with me?" they offered. "What?" I asked, not believing my ears. "I said, I live pretty near here, above the ground. I take the minecart home each night, which is easier than maneuvering through a cave sys-tem to get to a small, rocky crevice. Do you want to come? I'm guessing you haven't had any bread in a while."

Normally, I wouldn't have accepted what is clearly just an offer made out of pity. As in, _Oh, look at the poor little twelve-year-old who has to work in the mines all day. It would be a good deed to help them._

But, as much as I didn't want to be someone's good deed for the day, I was not going to survive to make it to the small carving I made in the wall to lived in, so I numbly nodded my head in gratitude.

"It's a bit of a long journey, especially without power rails. Do you think you'll be able to make it? I have some milk with me for the days I get bitten. I'd be happy to give you some."

"Th-thank you. I mean, you're saving my life. What's your name?" I asked, try-ing to remember how to be social.

"Me? I'm Luna, named after my grandmother," she answered after a pause that seemed oddly sad.

"Pretty name," I replied. As I drained the bucket, I felt the power of the milk going through my body, rejuvenating it until my health began to climb steadily upwards, half-heart by half-heart.

Finally, we arrived at our destination. When I saw where we are, I stifled a gasp. It was clear why Luna offered to help me. She lived in the Nether.


	2. Transformed

CHAPTER 2: Transformed

The purple swirls surrounded me, mixing together and entering my body. The moment I thought that I would turn into nothing but purple mist, I entered the fiery Nether. Streams of lava poured down, feeding into a lake of the stuff. A huge fortress loomed above all of the red-hot lava, secured into mountains of netherrack on either side.

Luna, upon entering the Nether, underwent a transformation. She turned pink and began to rot away. A gold sword appeared in her hand. "You're– you're–" I couldn't get the words out.

"A zombie pigman with an invisibility potion and all leather armor," she said, confirming my suspicions. "And, before you ask, I am not part of The Fortress. HB is allying with the Nether, mostly because he doesn't have fire resistance and to make potions of it, you need magma cream, so I don't think we should bother him if he's not bothering us. It's unnecessary danger."

"But he's killing millions of villagers!" I bursted out. "Don't you care about them and their families? And, if not, then why did you save me?" I wanted to tell her, _I didn't realize how selfish you are,_ but she did save my life.

"And? Those villagers should create their own resistance, then, not be selfish enough to ask us inhabitants of the Nether to give up our lives for them! I saved you because I had the milk, and I was in the right place, and you're so young. Besides, I have a small indoor farm with cows to milk when I want. I buy my bread in the Over-world, which I only work in because I love it. Also, I admire how persistent you are. Is anything wrong with being friendly to others just for the sake of it?"

I stared in shock at Luna, partly awed that she has never felt the constraints of her entire life being owned by HB, partly surprised that she likes the Overworld enough to come there every day, even if it means work and risking poison, but I mostly hated her.

My family was dying slowly of starvation and Luna didn't care. She thought they just needed to get a bit more self-reliant and all of their problems would dis-appear?! "I don't want to live with you if you don't care about all of the people dying out there just because you aren't one of them or you don't know them! People like you disgust me, when you grew up knowing nothing but freedom!" I told her, my voice slowly rising in volume.

Her eyes grew cold. "You think I grew up knowing nothing but freedom? My people and our suffering have long since been given the cold shoulder by the Ender Dragon, and subsequently everyone else. HB taking power was the best thing that has ever happened to us! He's scared enough of the Nether that he doesn't come here because none of his mobs are fire resistant, making it a waste of workers, and it is big enough that finding The Fortress isn't easy. Before HB, the Ender Dragon's lack of supplies for the Nether resulted in my family _dying_. Why would I want to go back to that reality?" Luna snapped.

My eyes grew wide with disbelief. "But the Ender Dragon . . . She was . . ." I trailed off.

"What? She was 'kind'? She was 'fair'? She was 'unbiased'?" Luna asks mock-ingly. "If you know what it's like, shouldn't you help the millions of others who are dying from the same reasons, undergoing the same pain?" I pointed out.

"No." Luna's reply was firm and I realized that there was no use arguing with her. To her, the time before HB was bad and now that HB was in power, she had en-ough supplies. Why would she want to get rid of HB, whoever he really was?

Defiantly, I turned and marched to The Fortress, marveling at how the milk had truly saved my life. Just hours ago, I couldn't have walked on my own, much less marched.

In addition to large bridges arching across, connecting different rooms, there was a big and ornate entrance that had a dome of glowstone at the top. Glowstone—how long had it been since I'd heard that word, or anything about the Nether, really? There was definitely more truth to Luna's statement than I'd realized. Then I remembered.

 _I was six years old at the time when I heard a few kids joking about a different dimension. I had promptly gone home and hunted down my dad, as this was before HB had killed him for speaking out against our new ruler. I then asked, "What sa dimen-sion mean?"_

 _His expression grew dark. "Well, they are like another world that you can only go to via a portal. There are three. The Overworld, where we live, is the safest, without any dangerous monsters to kill us. The End, available only to Endermen and the Ender Dragon, is also not very dangerous, I suppose. And then there's the Nether. You should not ever, ever, ever, go to this dimension. It has lava and fire everywhere and will kill you very quickly. I repeat, DO NOT GO HERE."_

" _What else is there?" I asked, now thoroughly curious about the Nether and about to start an obsession that would last through most of the next year. "They have netherrack, which is lit on fire permanently. They also have glowstone, which is yellow and bright. There is nether brick. There is also quartz ore."_

Outside of The Fortress were two guards. "Um . . . can I come in? I was summ-oned here by The Fortress. I have this book to prove it," I stated, throwing it at them.

The twin blazes exchanged a glance before moving aside to let me in. There was a beautiful lava-fall that hit netherrack inside, something I hadn't seen before. Suddenly, a zombie pigman walked over to me. "Hello. I have been awaiting your arrival for some time now, Erro. We are glad that you have arrived safely. The first thing to do is turn you into one of us."

"What?" I asked, surprised and very, very confused about what they seem to be suggesting.

"One of us. You will become a Ghast, one of our many air-force patrols that we will use to burn down HB's secret headquarters, once we locate it, of course."

"How– What– Huh?" I stammered. "If I'm a Ghast, then I can't find my uncle!" I bursted out, remembering the day he left as if I was there again.

 _My uncle arrived that day with grave news. "I am being called away by HB to help build an ocean monument to him. He needs me to help summon the Guardians that will keep invaders out when . . . danger comes. Not that it is," he added hastily. "If it were ever to occur, though, then these will be forever safe as a testament to the gra-ndeur that our world is now. I will not return from what will become my new home."_

 _The next day, my mother threw herself off of our village's castle. After the death of my father, our uncle was the only one keeping her alive. A week after her death, HB forced me into the mines if I wanted us to survive, my salary keeping my younger sis-ters alive. They were ten, old enough to know how to spend it but not old enough to work for it themselves, I had insisted._

My uncle had to know that my mom killed herself, and that my sisters could have starved any second—my sisters! I needed only to think of them and all my resolve melted away. They were going to think I'd died when my salary didn't come for them, and it wouldn't be long after that they'd begin to starve and, inevitably, end up dead.

"My sisters!" I said out loud. The zombie pigman who'd come to greet me loo-ked sad. "You didn't hear the bad news? I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it wouldn't be fair not to tell you. HB, he . . . he—"

"Don't." My voice, even to my own ears, sounded cruel and icy. "Don't. Say. It. You liar! They're fine, for now, but if you don't help me then they won't stay fine!"

They seemed determined to finish their sentence. "HB killed them as soon as you went to the mines, to punish them for what your dad. He just needed someone from your family for the mines because the more slaves, the better. HB tricks all of his workers into becoming slaves, without ever making a threat. We need you to be a Ghast."

"Fine." As long as I'd help destroy HB for killing my family and tearing my uncle permanently away from me, I would comply. The zombie pigman dragged me to a small chamber and closed the iron door. There was no opening mechanism on my side. For a moment, I panicked and thought this was an intricate trap by HB to kill me. But, no, I still had _Stonekiller_ on me, and HB would know that before trying to trap me.

The weight of _Stonekiller_ was familiar and comforting to me, a memory of what once was in the whirlwind of what now is. Suddenly, swirls of numbers and let-ters come down and engulf me. I see zeroes and ones, open and closed braces. I feel myself changing . . . changing . . . and suddenly what was a small, two-by-one vil-lager is now a huge Ghast, too big for the chamber. I fly out the doors once they open and stare around me in shock.

"What happened?" I ask. The zombie pigman smiles at me, though it appears more like the grin of a killer, and says, "You entered the Modding, or Modifying, Cha-mber."

In this new, larger body, with the instinctive ability to shoot fireballs and def-end myself, I feel more than modified. I feel like I have a different body. No, deeper than that. My powerlessness has melted away, replaced with pure hate for HB and sadness at the deaths of most of my family. I've more than been modified— I've been transformed.

A/N: I don't want to do too many author's notes in this story, but a problem has arisen. (Gasp! So dramatic!) The reason that these stories have many hyphens is . . . I don't actually know. It's not me. I think that the website is glitching. Sorry about that. Also: I have some other questions. First of all, the main character doesn't sleep in the Nether. Second of all, I'm aiming to publish a chapter every day and writing them in advance. The last question, which is about how Erro can survive in the Nether, was answered for you by the chapter you just read. PM me any more questions you might have!


	3. Remembered

CHAPTER THREE: Remembered

I went with the other Ghasts and, as a tribute to my dead sisters, I spent my free time thinking only of them and of all the memories I had, starting with the day an Iron Golem came to our village.

 _My younger sisters came racing into the house, shrieking with excitement. "Erro Erro Erro! There's a big iron monster with a pumpkin hat on!" Immediately realizing what it was, me and my parents raced outside to get a look and found that our entire village was congregating around our giant new guardian._

 _"It's said," my mother's friend, Harriet, whispered to us, "that the first children to receive a poppy from the iron golem are blessed with his protection."_

 _My sisters squealed with excitement. Suddenly the golem cut through the crowd and headed towards us. Their eyes grew wide with fear and wonder. He handed each of them a poppy. They went crazy, running around and spinning in circles. Then the gol-em lumbered around the village. That night, we hid in our houses, as always, but while we did it, we felt safe. In the middle of the night, one of my sisters came over to me and pressed a poppy into my hand. "Have it," she whispered._

 _"No. It's yours," I said firmly. It was about more than the poppy. It was about the blessing of protection that I knew she needed, or at least more than I did._

 _"You TAKE it!" she insisted. But I had more patience and, eventually, she gave up and went back to huddling and giggling slightly with her friends. I breathed a small sigh of relief._

Not that the poppy made a difference, clearly. When HB took over, he had all iron golems come to be his personal bodyguards. There were many rumors that HB had the golems killed and made his own, ones strictly loyal to him with no lingering sensation of the villagers.

Another Ghast came over to me and saw the sad and weary look in my eyes that so many of the miners shared. "Hey. Lost someone?" she asked without any note of sympathy, or pity in her voice, just the sad sound of someone who'd been hollowed out by sadness.

"My sisters." Why did I tell a complete stranger something so personal? "HB killed them for what my dad did."

"Oh. That's sad. Guess what?" she asked. I humored her. "What is it?" Her eyes became cold. "I. Don't. Care. He killed my entire FAMILY and all of my FRIENDS the day I joined The Fortress. I feel the weight of their deaths EVERY DAY that I exist! So. I. Don't. Care!" she screamed.

Suddenly, pure hate came out of me for this Ghast. I acted before I thought and shot a fireball straight at her. She dodged it easily. "You think that I'm going to let one fireball take me out? Idiot," she said, the cruel blade of loss cutting through her voice.

I backed away slowly, flying from her until she lost interest. Then, once alone, I immersed myself in the memory of the day my father was publicly murdered. It was HB saying, _Look how I kill your loved ones and force you to watch helplessly. If you even lift a finger, I will ensure your destruction._ And yet . . . here I was. Unharmed, unafraid, unsafe. And a member of The Fortress.

 _That night, we all cried. The neighbors stayed away from our house, and from that day on, whenever I passed through the market, I heard whispers of "infected" and "guilty" around me, at the edges of my hearing._

 _When dawn came, my sisters' faces were tear-stained. I held them close and whispered comforting words to them. "Don't worry. It's all going to be okay. It's all going to be just fine."_

 _Four things happened within the next week that proved how wrong I was: my uncle left us, my mother killed herself, I was sent to the mines, and the two of them were killed._

My memories of them being with me stopped there, but in the mines, the illu-sion of their life was the only thing keeping me from offing myself rather than bear-ing the wrath of the cave spiders and feeling the utter hopelessness of my situation.

Later that day, we went to training. We were to defend The Fortress until the End Portal was built and powered up. Then the attack would commence: Ghasts fly-ing in to take out HB's minions and a horde of zombie pigmen and blazes to aim for HB himself.

Briefly, I wondered why Nether mobs would want to reinstate a leader who had killed so many of their family, but then I concluded that Luna must've been one of the Glitched: people or creatures who had a mistake in their Spawn, the time of birth.

While we trained at target practice and learned our shifts, my mind was else-where: I was feeling mournful but also relieved of a burden. I had ensured that my sisters would be, at least by me, remembered.


	4. Betrayed

CHAPTER FOUR: Betrayed

Over the next few Cycles, the unit of time they use here instead of days, there was nothing eventful on patrol duty. So my mind wandered to what I need to do next. I had a different agenda than The Fortress, with a lesser goal in mind than libe-rating millions of suffering villagers.

All I wanted to do was find my uncle. I couldn't do it as a Ghast. So that meant getting to the Modding Chamber, turning into a squid, and getting into the Over-world and underwater before I died. And that wasn't even the hardest part.

First, I had to find the Ocean Monument. And, even if I could somehow locate it, Guardians attack squids. And, if I managed to dodge their lasers, I'd have to break my way in. As a squid. Without hands. Once inside, I'd need to find my uncle and so-mehow communicate with him about what had happened.

Time was of the essence. It takes years to complete the build, and a year had already passed since my uncle left. If the monument was finished, I wouldn't be able to get inside or survive long enough to do so, even if I could've broken blocks. So I was going to have to be fast, and I was going to have to be sly.

But my main worry at the time was getting the materials to build a portal home. My memory of the portal was foggy at best. Was it five-by-three? Did it have corners? Was it a square?

I couldn't remember, but even if I had, where was the obsidian and flint-and-steel to build it? I suddenly felt so overwhelmed by the task that part of me gave up. But the rest of me convinced myself to keep going.

All of a sudden, I realized something: there must've been obsidian there somehow. They made the Nether portal, of course. And it disappeared, so the mat-erials to make it were somewhere in this fortress. I just needed to find them.

The next Cycle, after forcing down yet another bowl of mushroom stew, I initiated Step 1 of my plan.

I waited until the Blaze that was the Ghasts' Patrol turned his back. Then I reentered the Nether Fortress and stuck to the less-used bridges until I reached The Vault. There, I pretended that I am sent here on official business. I'd learned that Wither Skeletons are stupid and dangerous only in big groups, not with just the two of them.

But seeing the Wither Skeletons reminded me of the Ender Dragon's second-in-command: the Wither themself. They were known for being ruthless and a big fan of TNT, all three heads. The three heads could be placated for days with a few cows or sheep (assuming a few meant a couple hundred).

"I ass _ume_ you've got business down here, Ghast?" asked one of them in their odd accent, putting unnecessary emphasis on odd syllables and spitting the ends of sentences as if they were angry.

"You Withers trying to get on my wrong side?" I challenged, gambling my life on the fact that they thought I had higher authority than I did. The memory of the cave spider venom was burned into my brain, but what the Wither Skeletons could deal out was much worse.

"I su _ppose_ we are, Ghast," the other chimed in. I somehow restrained myself from glaring at the two of them. "The Fortress needs some obsidian to make the Nether Portal, as they have identified a possible ally." The two Wither Skeletons looked at one another before dutifully moving aside.

 _How did that work?_ Then I realized: The Fortress was fragile, like a piece of glass. They were based off of trust, and the real guards were outside. But, one thing going wrong could smash them to bits. I walked in and saw rows upon rows of ch-ests. I'd only ever seen one before, at the blacksmith's shop in my village. But this—this was truly amazing. I cringed when I saw the item frame, made of leather, on the wall with a piece of obsidian in it. But I just opened it up. Suddenly, my mind blan-ked. How much obsidian did I need?

I was sure that the Wither Skeletons would check how much I brought out with me, and I knew that they would expect me to have memorized how much I needed. Then I remembered: it was a four-by-four square. I grabbed the obsidian, was checked at the exit, and then saved them in the chest that was in the small corner of my Assigned Living Quarters.

I should've felt proud, that private sort of emotion that you get when you did something hard but that you can't tell anyone about. Instead, the seed of guilt was planted inside me, and every time someone gave me the smallest gesture of trust, it was like they used bone meal on it. I knew why I felt like this, of course. I was the worst kind of person. I had betrayed The Fortress.


	5. Stolen

CHAPTER FIVE: Stolen

The next task was to find when the Modifying Room would be empty for long enough to turn myself into a squid, make the portal, and jump through. I was going to watch, instead of guarding The Fortress, when our Blaze guards, Tommaso and Jake, beckon me over.

I flew to them obediently. Tommaso began to whirl around violently while his twin, Jake, affixed me with a glare. "So. You think you can sneak off to who-knows-where without being caught? The two Wither Skeletons who you thought you fooled into compliance, being all clever, sold you out in an instant."

"How did you . . . how did you know that I left?" I got out, stumbling over my words. Tommaso calmed down once he saw that I was been scared into compliance and jumped in for his brother.

"Another Ghast told. I think you can guess who," he answered in a somewhat sarcastic tone of voice. And he was right: I knew it immediately. And I had to go find her, because as much as I hated to say it, I needed her help.

"I need to go back to work," I told them, mustering my courage to keep from stuttering. They smiled at one another, glad to have "gotten through to me" and then continued on with their jobs.

I found her shooting fireballs at a zombie pigman who was getting too close, someone who didn't belong to The Fortress. It wasn't Luna. Half of me was relieved, but the other half, the part of me that was forged in the mines, wished desperately that she were the one being killed.

But, once that pigman was killed, many others came running. I remembered the zombie pigman core value: teamwork. Like the wolves from the Overworld, they all started ganging up on her. I shot a few fireballs, killing all but one. I purposely avoided harming Luna, who must've somehow recognized me because she glared. "So. This is how you treat my gift?! Killing my brethren?" she called up.

I ignored her and turned to the Ghast. "I need your help," I whispered. She just looked scornfully at me. "You. Need. _My._ Help?" I nodded, knowing it wouldn't be easy. This was the Ghast who, on my first day at The Fortress, had shouted at me for mourning my sisters.

"Well. I suppose, seeing as you don't care about me, I ought to ask a price of you," she said craftily.

"W-what do you want?" I asked, thoroughly afraid of her. "I want _Stonekiller,_ your precious pickaxe." Her words were cold.

This Ghast wanted me to hand over the last shred of memory that I had left of my old life in exchange for some advice. I looked at her in disbelief. "You can't really want that, can you? I can give you anything else!"

"The 'anything else' that you offer will not mean so much to you. You must pay deeply for something so valuable. Now, will you or won't you give me _Stonekiller_ as payment?" she asked.

I had to remind myself that _Stonekiller_ was only an object, but my uncle was, well, he was my _uncle._ "Fine. But you give me the knowledge first."

"Why? Don't trust me? You can take an object back from me, but I can't take information back from you," she pointed out. I handed it to her and told her my problem.

"So you need to get to your uncle, who is underwater, building an Ocean Monument. Your needs are simple, and the solution is simpler. Just wait until we have reached the sleep part of our Cycle, sneak past the Magma Cube night-guards, and do it then," she said, pronouncing each word slowly as if I was stupid.

"Yes, but how do I get to _him_?" I asked impatiently. She looked at me. "You are not serious, am I right?"

"I _am_ serious! What happens when I get to the Overworld?"

"Your plan is inherently flawed. You don't need to do it yourself when you can just get to the water and ask a squid to do the work for you. Are you an idiot?" she replied, her voice dripping with scorn.

I was tempted to keep _Stonekiller_ for myself, but that would have been the true betrayal of my family, not giving away an item. If I disregarded everything that they cared about, then they might as well have not been in my life.

I handed her _Stonekiller,_ feeling a sharp pain of regret. Then I flew off and waited until the sleeping shift of our Cycle. But, though it had been a fair trade, I still felt as if _Stonekiller_ had been stolen from me.

A/N: I know that Erro grabbed the wrong amount of obsidian. That was on purpose. Also, I think that this will be the last time I upload a daily chapter.


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